Charlie Productions : Animatronics

Animatronics brings puppets to life by a series of servo motors inside the puppet which are radio controlled by a skilled operator sitting out of shot. We obviously made use of this for Panda in Hallo Panda, his mouth, eyes, eyebrows and ears all being controlled by a couple of people wiggling their fingers as fast as they could to keep up with our rapid-fire dialogue.

It's quite a delightful process, although obviously it takes far more time than you'd like, partly because of the need to constantly check on the machinery - it's all custom-built for each new puppet, see - but mainly because, for us at least, we had a man inside the suit and he was boiling - which meant regular breaks, understandably.

When we were first considering making Hallo Panda, we started by thinking about digitally altering footage of a real-life bear, as can be seen in 'Babe'... But as can also be seen in that gem of a film (albeit with a ferociously bright colour palette, it has to be said), animatronics can also bring a character to life in brilliant ways. And once we started visiting zoos and seeing the sad and angry animals inside, the more we wanted to just use puppets. It was the right choice, and one we want to extend in the making of the feature version of Panda, ideally so that at the end of the film our disclaimer can read "No Animals Were Filmed In The Making Of This Film". That's the dream, anyway.

Charlie Productions believe passionately in doing things and always trying to stop in time for tea.

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